Ukraine battlefield becoming one vast grey zone, as Russian units penetrating deeper (Ukraine Battlefield update, Day 1,642)

Every day, the Ukraine Battlefield update newsletter offers a clear look at how the war is unfolding on the ground. Subscribe for free here to get the full text delivered to your inbox. Ukrainians, and Russians in particular, have changed their tactics and are bypassing the drone wall through bold incursions. All this is making the front line even less clear and more chaotic Ukraine’s new target: attacks on the Ozon online retailer. A drill in Kaliningrad as preparation for mobilisation? Maps of the day: Russian pressure in Donbas along three axes. Videos of the day: Magyar’s Birds strike in Russia and Crimea. The major summer breakthrough did not come, but a change in tactics did. The capture of the whole of Donbas, including the remaining “fortress belt” in Donetsk region, remains a core priority of president Vladimir Putin’s regime. The Russian dictator has reportedly set a deadline of 31 December 2026 to capture the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk agglomeration, which Ukrainians have been fortifying since 2014, after Russia provoked the war in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky also said this. According to him, Putin has set 15 such deadlines already, and each has so far ended in failure. Experts say this “deadline” is also detached from reality. It is impossible, Zelensky said, while also speculating that Russia would organise mobilisation after the September elections in an effort to raise 300,000 men. The scale of Russian losses is enormous: the Ukrainian president estimated them at 267,000 since the start of 2026, of whom around 155,000 were believed to have been killed. This figure cannot be independently verified, but it has been clear for several months that losses are exceeding recruitment and that Russia’s military machine is unable to replenish the “meat grinder”. This is also why there is growing talk of preparations for mobilisation in some form. A drill in Kaliningrad could point to such a development, as we write below. Constant Russian pressure is evident at many points along the front, but despite the exceptionally difficult situation, Donbas has not seen a summer offensive or movements of large formations, which cannot get through the deadly zone controlled by drone operators. One need only click on the DeepState map to see a broad grey zone stretching across the front, where it is impossible to determine precisely who is in control. In practice, this complicated situation is most often manifested by both sides attempting to penetrate ever further behind enemy lines in order to attack drone units, or at least carry out “flag operations” designed to create the impression that they have captured a village. Mapping the front line and deciphering what is and is not a grey zone are therefore becoming even more difficult. The independent Russian website Meduza examines this new tactic in greater detail in its analysis. This is not a new development: Ukraine Battlefield update has written about this trend for a long time. It also accompanied the prolonged fighting for Pokrovsk. However, the new intensity and depth of such incursions merit attention. Meduza notes that attackers operating in small groups are now trying to cover whole kms rather than hundreds of metres — and sometimes as many as 10 kms. Such units, the independent Russian website wrote, do not require substantial supplies and are therefore not dependent on the main forces. On the one hand, such operations serve propaganda purposes; on the other, they seek to destabilise enemy defences as much as possible. A new chaotic picture at the front. “The combat formations of both armies have become intermingled on many fronts, control over roads and settlements is often uncertain, and villages change hands several times a week,” the Russian website wrote. According to Meduza, the trend is most pronounced near Orikhiv, in central Zaporizhzhia region, close to Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, where both sides are conducting two offensives. This is mainly aided by terrain featuring small woodlands, rivers and ravines, where it is easier to manoeuvre and more effective to attack drone operators. However, it is also happening in many other places. A deputy commander in Sumy region spoke about how grass two metres high had helped Russians during their incursions, enabling them to conduct reconnaissance, lay mines in areas and launch drone attacks. An analyst using the pseudonym Playfra described the situation in the village of Mykolaivka in Donetsk region, where a firefight following the infiltration of Russian troops cost Ukrainian soldiers their lives. French blogger Clément Molin also wrote about Russian incursions in the context of the difficult situation near Dobropillia, where Ukrainians are using five different routes and Russians have penetrated into the town itself. Although he assessed their significance as very limited, they are sometimes carried out by special units preparing traps or attacking drone operators. SITUATION IN DOBROPILLA :In the Dobropilla direction, Russia finally consolidated the destroyed town of Rodysnke, while heavy fightings are still happening in Bilytske.To supply Dobropilla, Ukraine is using 5 roads (so 5 different doors). Russian army continues to send… pic.twitter.com/7RWlCAyVdo— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) August 21, 2026 According to Meduza, the new Russian tactics were also demonstrated when troops from the 58th Combined Arms Army breached what had once been impenetrable defences near Novodanylivka on the Zaporizhzhia axis, reaching a section of the Orikhiv–Mala Tokmachka road. As we have previously written, this village is, on the one hand, a symbol of Ukrainian memes because Russians have been continuously trying to capture it for more than a year; on the other, Ukrainian mechanised columns suffered heavy losses in its vicinity in 2023. “As Bismarck said: whoever controls Mala Tokmachka controls the world,” went one of many jokes about the destroyed village stretching for 12 kms. Russia’s The Insider published a video compilation showing the pro-Russian military blogger Boris Rozhin repeatedly speaking on television programmes about advances on Mala Tokmachka from May 2025 to April 2026. Z-bloggers last wrote about its capture last week, but it remains in the grey zone on the DeepState map. It would be funny were it not for the bloody fighting for which both sides are paying a huge price. Ukraine has a new target — Ozon. After massive attacks on Wildberries, the “Russian Amazon”, Ukrainians have targeted another victim on Russian territory. Over the weekend, they struck several logistics centres belonging to Ozon, the country’s second-largest online retailer, which began as an online bookshop.